As is well known, electronic entertainment games using software programs have been widely used for a long time by children and adolescents. In recent years, with the development of personal computers (PCs) and the spread of high-speed Internet, online games are rapidly becoming active and it is no exaggeration to say that they have become a kind of culture that anyone can easily enjoy regardless of sex and age.
Based on this, the game industry is progressing rapidly, and the kinds of games include a wide range of games ranging from simple brain-teaser games to various combat games, sports games, motorcycle and car-racing games, and the like. Thus, users may choose and enjoy appropriate games according to their taste.
Meanwhile, these games are basically operated, in a state in which a PC or a game machine is provided, using a joystick and buttons of the game machine or using a keyboard and mouse of a PC in most cases, and since all actions including the behavioral motion of a player in a game are performed by the manipulation of the user who plays the game, the sense of realism is greatly reduced. Therefore, games developed at great expense and effort are often overlooked by users because of diminished interest for this reason.
In addition, for example, a car-racing game, which is installed in some large offline entertainment places such as an amusement park, is equipped with a vehicle operating device so that a user actually feels as though the vehicle were in motion. However, even in this case, the user cannot feel a sense of reality, with most games.
That is, although the user can perform all actions, such as starting, acceleration, changing-direction, and stopping the vehicle, similar to those as in a real vehicle, the user is sitting on a chair and using his/her hands and feet in a stationary state, and cannot feel the same experience as a player in a game, for example, an inertia phenomenon in which the user's body is slightly bent backward or tilted forward upon starting or stopping, or a leaning phenomenon in which the user's body is biased in one direction upon changing-direction.
Meanwhile, Korean Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-0037168 discloses a bicycle exercise/game device, which may increase exercise effects while satisfying the criteria of realism and stimulation of interest in game play.
This technology allows an occupant of a stationary bicycle to control a handle while viewing a programmed screen (course), and allows the occupant to feel as if the occupant were actually riding a bicycle and obtain aerobic exercise effects by applying a load to a bicycle pedal depending on terrain features such as slopes and obstacles or by vibrating a saddle.
However, since the occupant can only manipulate the handle based on a traveling course displayed on the screen provided at the front in the state in which the bicycle is fixed, and the load on the pedal and vibration of the saddle are merely achieved depending on terrain features of the programmed course, this technology fails to realize realistic phenomena, such as an inertia phenomenon and a change in direction that the user's body can feel when actually riding a bicycle.